


Didn't leave nobody but the baby

by Tabata



Series: City of Hidden Houses [3]
Category: Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1868373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About four years have passed since the Dark War. The Fair Folk has raised against the Clave, in retaliation for the unfair punishment inflicted upon them, and now another war rages between the fairies and the Nephilim, claiming victims on both sides. Clary's dead, leaving Jace alone to take care of their boy, Thomas. When Jace can't face the new situation and runs away to clear his mind, it's Alec who steps in and deals with the kid, all the while trying to convince the Clave that he is suitable to be permanently head of the New York Institute despite his relationship with Magnus, and looking everywhere for his parabatai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Didn't leave nobody but the baby

**Author's Note:**

> Miracles happen! I had wanted to write something on the Shadowhunters' universe for quite some time now, but I had never found the right way to start... until now. This story is set a few years after the 5th book and doesn't take into consideration whatever happened in the 6th because, despite being posted now, it has been written in January. It turned out, though, that it's not so unlikely, after all.  
> The title comes from an old song of the same name.

The arrow hits the target with a loud thud, a few inches away from the red center.

It's still a better result than the past thirty arrows he shot – now all stuck along the edge of the bull's eye –but frustrating nonetheless and clearly unacceptable for someone whose weapon of choice is supposed to be the bow. But not a single shot hit home since Alec started practicing, and the fact that anger compromises his aim makes him madder and therefore sloppier. 

He can't help but wonder if that's exactly what happened during the last battle. If the fury clouding his judgment also jeopardized his performance in battle and that's why that arrow flew right above its intended target. If that is why he failed.

He growls as he retrieves a new arrow from the quiver, words full of hatred echoing in his mind once again as they have been doing for days. Protecting her was your job Alec, so now her death is your fault.

Jace was in pain when he said that, but he was not totally wrong.  
It was Alec's job to keep the enemies away from them as they advanced on the battlefield. And now Clary is dead. Alec can't deny the connection between the two events. Still, Clary's idea was stupid and Jace only endorsed it because it was Clary's. He would have never said no to her, convinced as he was that she had his same ability to pull off the craziest or riskiest tricks without any or just a few minor consequences. But she didn't, that much it's clear now.

But Jace is accusing him of a crime much worse, Alec knows that.  
His parabatai never said the actual words, but Alec could read the unspoken accusation in Jace's eyes and a deepest and much scariest shadow has fallen between them right after the battle. Jace thinks that it was no accident, that Alec deliberately missed the shot that would have stopped that man from killing Clary. 

A new, stronger surge of anger washes over him, resulting in a series of five arrows, quickly shot one after the other and all missing the target miserably. Alec throws the bow on the ground, with a low growl of frustration. He never liked Clary much. Actually, he never liked Clary at all. But he would have never done a vile thing like that – not to her, not to Jace, not to any other fellow Shadwohunter – and the fact that his best friend, his brother by the Law, thinks he would be capable of such a crime is devastating.

He's picking his bow up when the door of the weapons room opens and someone enters. He doesn't need to turn around to know that it's Magnus, his familiar sandal scent preceeding him. "I knew I would find you here," the warlock says.

Alec can hear a faint, tender smile in his voice but sadly enough that's not enough to cheer him up. "Go figure," he says.

Magnus doesn't lose his smile, tho. "I admit that wasn't the most original of lines, but don't you think I deserve a warmer welcome than a snarky remark?" He asks. "You could get naked, for example."  
Alec doesn't laugh – but Magnus is not sure he would have anyway – but he doesn't get more furious either, which is definitely a good sign.

"What do you want, Magnus?" He asks, resignedly. His voice is tense, but the tone is the one he uses when Magnus has been really annoying on purpose and it's either being accomodating with him or killing him. Hearing that tone makes the warlock know that at least he broke through the veil of fury.

"I don't know. Making sure you were still alive, I presume," he answers. "That's what a lovely husband should do. And I'm with no doubt lovely and apparently also a husband."

"Not by the Law," Alec says, tiredly. Not that he's happy with the notion.  
The Clave never recognized his marriage with Magnus – officially because it was a mundane ceremony, but clearly because Magnus is a Downworlder and a man – and somehow Alec can't get over it. The Clave's barely tepid acceptance of his homsexual relationship is not enough for him.

"Are we going to discuss the validity of our marriage and therefore my commitment as a husband deriving from it?" Magnus asks, hesitantly. "Because I was not prepared for that. I was going for something more on the line of: do you want to have dinner with me, honey? See, now that seems incredibly out of line."

"I'm not hungry," Alec answers.

"You've been in here for the past five hours. I know the Codex is strict about practicing, but it seems a little bit too much even for you crazy people."

"I said, I'm not hungry," Alec says again, casting him a meaningful look.

Magnus rises both hands. "Fine. I wasn't suggesting you might need to ingest something edible at all. After all, it's not like you're a humain being, needing food or anything."

“Where's Thomas?” Alec asks, angrily pulling out the arrows from the bull's eye.

“With your sister, but I must say she's not very good at babysitting,” Magnus answers. “She's got no patience and a very weird sense of humor. Anyway, the kid wants you, Alec.”

Alec stuffs all the arrows but one in the quiver and goes back to the mark on the floor, not looking at him once. “Can't you go to him?” He says, arranging the arrow on his bow. The gesture is so natural to him that he doesn't even have to look at the weapon in his hands anymore. Whatever he needs to know about his bow, he can sense it through his fingers. “You're his freaking uncle too, after all.”

Magnus doesn't fret. He never does. After almost a thousand years it would be pointless and ridiculous to let anything that trivial upset you. Not when you can summon demons, at least. But Alec's coldness towards him in the past few weeks does affect him and makes every answer less calm than the previous one. “The key word here is freaking,” he says, stepping away from the line of fire without being asked to. He knows Alec goes berserk if he's so mad he wants to miss all his shots and you don't let him. “Apparently, my cat's eyes are not so funny anymore in the dark and blue sparkles are not enough to hide that. Plus, there are only so many blue sparks a warlock can conjure before getting bored. I was made for far grater things, you know.”

For a moment, it looks like Alec was not even listening. The silence that fell after Magnus's last words is interrupted only by the hiss of arrows passing by to get stuck always a few inches away from the center of the bull's eye. Or even in the wall behind it. “I've things to do,” he says eventually, quickly dismissing the problem.

“I see,” Magnus agrees as the next arrow misses its target. “Like sulking in a deep pool of rage and being a very bad archer. I'm sure that's both awfully complicated and extremely useful.”

“I'm not his father, Magnus!” Alec snaps, hissing in frustration. He lowers his bow and his shoulders relax, his anger pouring out of him with the sound of his voice. 

“You're the closest thing to it, right now.”

That seems to work. Alec decides he's no longer interested in how bad he can shoot when he's enraged. He hangs his bow to the rack, ironically enough next to the one Jace uses for practice. "What am I supposed to say to him?" He finally asks, with resignation in his voice. "That his father run away and we can't find him?"

Magnus takes a few steps forward, his red coat billowing gracefully behind his back like a bright colorful tail. "If you think that's what he needs to hear right now," he says, skeptically.

"I don't think anything!" Alec snaps again, exasperated.

"Well, that much is clear, Alexander," Magnus snaps back, finally tired of being spoken to like that. He's usually well aware of the age difference between them and what it entails, but these last weeks have worn thin even his usually resilient patience. But one loook at Alec's tired face and at the black rings under his eyes and Magnus no longer wants to smash his husband's head anywhere anymore.

Alec is currently trying to explain to the Clave that his sexual orientation has nothing to do with his ability to rule the New York Institute, but apparently they are convinced that the two things are connected, which could seriously jeopardize his election. Clary's sudden death during an action that was not approved by the Clave and Jace running away are not making his life easier. He needs a break and if he's not gonna give it himself, it's Magnus's duty as a husband to give him one. 

The warlock sighs, pulling him closer. Alec leans against his chest and rests his head on his shoulder, his body finally giving in. "Listen," Magnus says, tenderly "tell him the truth, that you're looking for him and that you'll get him home soon."

"You know that's not the truth, Magnus." Alec sighs. "He disappeared, fell from the face of the Earth overnight. And that can only mean one thing. You know where he's gone."

"I know where I'd go," Magnus muses, gently swinging both of them right and left. "Iquitos, Peru. The cutest place you've ever seen, and well outside of the Clave juridistction."

Alec snorts. "Nothing is, love."

"Oh, you'd like that," Magnus says, leaving a kiss on Alec's head. It looks more like a patronizing gesture than antyhing, but Alec doesn't care. It's still a kiss and he's too tired to argue about Magnus open defiance of the Clave. "If only they let me in, already. It's been a century now."

"Only fifty-five years, actually."

Magnus rises an eyebrow. "Did you read that dossier too?"

Alec doesn't need to look up to know that Magnus is wearing a very worried expression right now. He smirks. "I read all the dossiers, Magnus. All of them."

"Right. And did you look into it? Okay... not the right moment," Magnus clears his throat. "Another time, maybe. So, what were we saying? Thomas. Just tell him you're looking for his father. That much is true."

"It is," Alec agrees, unwillingly stepping away from him. "But if, as I fear, Jace ran to that psychopath--"

"This is a problem we'll get to, if he actually did that," Magnus says, stopping him before he could enter his usual downward spiral of hate towards Sebastian and self-blaming. "You can't take care of everything at the same time, Alexander. Now, go to your nephew and talk to him. That's your only job for tonight. Tomorrow, we'll try to find out where your stupid parabatai decided to go."

This seems to give him some peace of mind, as usually Magnus's words do. Sometimes Alec just needs to be told that everything's gonna be alright. He nods to his husband and with one last kiss, he's out of the weapons room.

They gave Thomas one of the rooms in the Institute, and they tried to make it feel more like home with some of their old toys they found in the basement, and the biggest, fluffiest teddy bear Magnus was able to conjure from some toys store, the name of which Alec refused to gain knowledge of. But the kid doesn't really pay much attention to any of it. He misses his mum, and now his dad too.

When Alec reaches the room, he hears his sister's voice coming from inside. Isabelle is reading Thomas some story about a little bunny lost in the woods, making all kind of comments about his lack of sense of direction. For a moment Alec stands there, listening to her. Then, when he understands she won't refrain from calling the little rodent names for having lost his way yet again at page three, he opens the door putting a stop to the bunny-shaming.

"I'll take it from here," he says. Isabelle looks up and can't help but sigh in relief when she sees him.

"Good," she smiles to hide the fact that she's grateful that she can now escape this room and Thomas' quiet company. "Thomas was asking fo you."

Thomas doesn't look like he was asking for anyone at all. He sits quietly in his bed, his eyes exprensionless. Even when he turns to look at him, Alec can't tell if he's really happy to see him or not. His tiny face is a perfectly white mask, lacking in warmth and emotions. It's the same exact face Jace had when he first had came to live with them at the age of ten. Thomas has taken everything after him. His blonde wild curls, his honey colored eyes, even the cut of his eyes – that according to Magnus have the wolfish feel of the Herondale family. And now, even Jace's way of closing up against the outside world. Still, Alec can see Clary in the soft line of Thomas' jaw and in the light dusting of freackles on his nose. It was too much to hope that he would inherit her positive attitude, too. 

"I leave you two alone," Isabelle says as she stands up. "Goodnight, Thomas."

"Goodnight, aunt Izzy."

Alec takes his sister's place next to the bed as she leaves the room. "So, what's up?" He asks, as he lazily flips through the pages of the book. "You can't sleep?"

The kid doesn't answer but he has a question of his own, instead. "Where's dad?"

Alec understands that there's not gonna be any bunny story tonight, so he closes the book for good and puts it on the night stand. "I don't know," he says, deciding that honesty is the best option he has. He won't look this kid in the eyes and tell him lies. He just can't.

"Is he ever coming back?" The kid asks.

"Of course he is!" Alec answers, more outraged than he should after such a question from a kid. The fact is, as angry as he might be with Jace, he doesn't and never will believe his best friend is gone for good. He still thinks that Jace's a prick for running away, but he doesn't doubt that he's coming back sooner or later. 

"How do you know that?" Thomas inquires. "Did he tell you?"

"He didn't have to," Alec says. "He's my parabatai. Do you know what that means?"

Thomas seems to think about it. "That you fight together?"

Alec smiles. "Oh, it's so much more than that. Parabatai means that your father and I are like brothers for the Law. We have a bond so strong that we can give strenght to each other in battle and in life, and sometimes I can feel what he feels."

Thomas looks at him with his big, tawny eyes open in surprise. "And can you now?" He asks, exitedly. 

"He loves you very much," Alec says. "And he wish to be with you, but he needs to figure something out first. He's only gone away, so he can really be with you when he'll be back."

"I don't understand," Thomas says, his eyes filling up with sadness again. "If he wants to be with me, why didn't he stay?"

"Because..." Alec pauses, suddenly presented with the task of explaining to a kid how people sometimes need their space to think straight. Then, suddenly a useful memory comes to his mind. "Do you remember when your dad wanted to teach you sammersaults in the weapon rooms and you were afraid of them? What did you say to him?"

Alec remembers that day very well. He remembers Jace's smile as he took out the safety ropes from their box and announced he wanted to teach Thomas how to jump down from twenty feet. Alec was appalled. The kid was four. Jace must be out of his mind. Luckily, the kid had put his foot done and said no.

"I said no," Thomas says, echoing Alec's thoughts.

Jace was so disappointed. For some reasons, he had thought his kid was the same kind of daredevil he was. But Thomas was scared, he didn't find the idea so exciting.

"And what did you do?" Alec asks again.

"I went to my room," Thomas says, understanding dawning in his eyes.

Alec nods. "Yes, you did. A few hours passed and what happened then?"

Thomas sighs. "I came out of my room and went to dad, asking him if I could jump now," he answers. "And I jumped."

"You jumped," Alec confirms. He had insisted to stretch a safety net, waiting anxiously on the ground right next to Clary, hoping nothing bad would happen. Jace and Thomas were on the platform, twenty feet above their head, the same determined expression on their face. Jace had hugged Thomas and jumped off the platform, and they had both spinned gracefully in mid-air before the rope would pull them back. The moment Thomas' feet had touched the platform, he was smiling. Not out of relief, but of pure exstasy. As if the act of throwing himself into the void had given him a burst of energy. Then, he and Jace had looked at each other and bursted out laughing. "So, what happened in you room? Did something tell you that you had to jump?"

"No," Thomas shakes his head. "I just needed to think."

He says those words with all the seriousness of a four years old and Alec struggles to keep his face straight. "Exactly. That's what your dad is doing right now. It's only you and him now and he needs to think how to deal with it. For him, this is like summersaulting for the first time was for you. He doesn't know how to do it. What do you say if we give him a little time to figure this out?"

Thomas seems to think about it for a while and then he nods. "I think I can do that. But if he was here, I could help him."

Alec smiles, sadly. "You're right," he nods and then sighs. "Listen, let's do this. You give your father a little time and wait for him without worrying too much, and I promise you that tomorrow, me and uncle Magnus will start searching for him. Okay?"

Thomas seems satisfied with this deal and nods eagerly. "Good," Alec says. "Now, what about we go to sleep? Don't you know tomorrow doesn't come unless you sleep?"

Thomas chuckles because he knows very well that's not true. "Can you finish the story? Aunt Izzy is terrible at reading stories."

Alec chuckles. "She is, you're right," he agrees. "Okay, here we go."  
He opens the book and starts reading. The poor little bunny gets lost five more times – Isabelle wasn't so wrong cursing at him after all – and meets a lot of other animals while he tries to find his way back. By the time he gets home to Mother Bunny, Thomas is soundly asleep, and he can finally turn off the light.

When he comes out of the room, Magnus is there waiting for him. A few inches from his face, actually. "I think my biological clock has finally caught up with my age," he starts off, a cat smile on his face that matches his cat-like eyes.

"What in the Angel's name are you talking about?" Alec asks, tiredly.

"I saw you in there and I like what I saw. You were very sexy," he explains. "So now I'm torn between asking you for sex or a baby."

"Well, you won't have either tonight because I'm too tired," he says as he grabs him by the shirt and drags him along. "We're going to bed."

"Under certain circumstances that could be the start of both things," Magnus comments.

"Magnus, shut up."

As they walk towards their room, Alec thinks about what he said to his nephew about his parabatai's bond with Jace, about Jace's need to think this through before coming back and be a father again. And he hopes, hopes against all odds, that of all things he is at least right on this one.


End file.
